Garment Design: Gourmet Edition

I did break down and make myself this
sleeveless maternity dress, even though I
was 8.5 months pregnant at the time.

I'm doing the thing right now, where I'm delaying making nice things for myself because I feel the need to clean my house first, and then I don't want to make anything for my body in this size, and feel like I should save that silk noil until I've lost a bit of chub. Which is why I don't sew enough clothes for myself.

But while I was obsessing over this false choice, I hit upon a metaphor, which demanded to be blogged. So here I am, to talk about Garment Design.

Sewing for your family is like cooking for your family. Buying clothes off the rack is like buying processed, ready-to-eat food. Hey, we're all busy moms, and mouths must be fed, bums must be covered, right? (Sometimes, if you're going to a really nice store when a cheap one would suffice, it's like eating out. And that's just something you have to do every now and then.) With the decline in teaching the art of sewing - why, school systems, did you ever banish Home Economics? - people turn to off-the-rack as the staple of their wardrobe, and I really feel like this is negatively affecting the nutritional content of our dressing habits, so to speak. There is a diminished ability to express personal style, the quality of off-the-rack clothing is usually fairly poor, and changing trends can make shopping a nightmare for the choosy wearer, or one with "special dietary needs" (i.e. a larger, curvier figure, or the opposite).

This is me just making stuff up

Next comes sewing your own. Here's where I start to sound snooty - the culinary equivalent of sewing from a pattern is baking a cake from a cake mix. The patterns are designed to end up just like off-the-rack clothing. That means that they are all drafted to fit a b-cup bust size, among other drawbacks. Some will have those helpful recipe add-in suggestions on the box, such as how to alter a bust-line, or lengthening and shortening lines. But unless you've trained yourself in pattern alterations, they're not going to be very personal.

It turned into a wedding dress for my sister, which was
supposed to look like it was stitched  out of leaves.

What I mostly do is like cooking from a good recipe book. I mix and match my patterns, taking a sleeve from here, a neckline from there, use a tiered skirt instead of a straight skirt, and I lengthen everything, like I always add extra butter to my food. Sometimes I'll improvise a pan sauce, drafting a new piece or slipping in a pocket, replacing the zipper with buttons. It gives a wider scope for my ideas to take shape, and it also cuts down on the number of patterns I have to store. If I really want to make something again, I'll start by drafting my FrankenPattern onto muslin, which clips together with a big safety pin and doesn't need to be pinned to your fabric when cutting.

OK, yes, that is a zipper. I made two ball gowns in one day,
all right? I had to take a short cut.

Every once in a while, when I want something really unique, I'll just make it all up, such the Zuko costume for my son. My daughters attend an English Country Dance once a year, which requires (well, it's "optional", but we're us) Regency Era Dress, and since authentic patterns are hard to come by, I look in my Patterns of Fashion reproduction manual, and drape the patterns right there on their bodies, which is loads of fun. True cooking from scratch.

The final option is Thrifting, which I consider to be the equivalent of foraging in the wild, or growing your own food. I'm bad at all of those, so I'm just going to give it a passing nod of utmost respect.

Tune in next time for a pompous discourse on sourcing your ingredients.

This is How It's Done, people.

My eldest's offering for a bake sale.

“To Fangirl” (etymology fr English coll “fan” abbreviated form of “fanatic,” and “gurle,” ME, a young person of either sex) is a verb my daughters use to describe the inordinate delight taken in certain fictional subjects. At its most basic, it is the Squee Instinct. It’s been a thing for a long, long time. The modern young woman fangirls about Sherlock (the BBC show), Dr Who, Loki (or other Avengers/super heroes), and so on. You’ve seen the t-shirts. The litmus test is this: is there fan fiction? Then it’s fangirl territory. The word can also be used as a noun.

Skyward Sword Link and Zelda

Consistency is important to the fangirl. Even if you’re just making stuff up yourself, you have to take every canonical (e.g. actually written by Stephen Moffat) happening into account, and characters must not act outside of their usual mode, unless they are hypnotized by an alien or drugged. And if you’re going to dress up, you HAVE to get it exactly right. And someday, you’re going to find yourself dressing up, so you’d better build up your wardrobe skillz now. And that would be my department.

Around here, we start ‘em young, and we feed them only the finest material. My little ones’ favorites are Legend of Zelda and Avatar: the Last Airbender. I dare not say a word against it, because hey, someone has to play the video game (that would be me), and Avatar is actually a really good show. (I might write a whole blog post about it later.) And the costumes… well, let’s just say I’ve never had to think very hard about what to get my kids for their birthdays.

My latest - my son specified the Season One Prince Zuko.
It should be clear by now where my kids learn their fangirling from.

My first major sewing project ever.
I totally altered the pattern, too,
to make it more like the movie. 

Replication is a skill set in its own right. It’s one thing to go down to the Disney store and buy the approximately-colored dress with the right princess face on it (that is the current way to distinguish between princesses at Disney) and make your little girl happy. That’s just fine. Children are happy at the end. But I got my first taste of replication when my eldest turned 4, and I never looked back...

When my son wanted to be Sheriff Woody for Hallowe'en, I couldn’t just get the costume that was an image of the cartoon representation of the toy of the puppet of the person, silk-screened onto a jumpsuit. Even though there may have never been a Real Person Sherriff Woody before, there is now, and my son was him. Actual blue jeans, a proper shirt, separate cowboy vest, nice boots, and a real bandanna. That’s how we roll. (Full disclosure: I bought the printed jumpsuit for Buzz Lightyear. Dammit Jim, I’m a seamstress, not an engineer.)

 My only real regret is that when I made a Princess Aurora gown, I gave in and made it pink. A Real Replicator would have known to make it blue, like it is for most of the movie, including the whole time she is sleeping. (No, I'm not posting a picture of that one. Bob will eat me.)

Tool Talk: Knitting

Knitting is what's on my mind, so we're going to stick with it for a bit. Quilting, garment construction, and costume design are all in the queue, though, so you non-knitters take heart.

I'm going to tell you another thing about myself: I love tools. As legos are to an eight year old boy, all manner of crafting and sewing tools are to me: toys, yes, but also my creative limbs. I'm a sucker for quilting notions, specialized pencils, stencil sheets (of which I have about ten times as many as I've ever used), miniature things - Oh Dear Me, the miniature things! - and so on. Incidentally, it's also the reason I was able to learn to love camping with my kiddos - specialized camping gear is The Best.

Now, being a lover of Real Things, as well as a lover of tools, naturally I believe in the importance of getting the finest options available. Usually when I learn a new skill, I go a bit overboard, buying things I think I might need, but refining my needs as I go, and learn my preferences. So I have a box full of various types of stitch markers, cable needles, stitch holders, different sizes of tapestry and yarn needles, and, of course, every size and variety of knitting needle imaginable: aluminum, plastic, wood, double-pointed, circular, long straight, short straight... you get the idea. Some day I want a set of bone dpns, but I'm in no hurry. I'm not sure I'd ever even use them, but I do collect things.

My favorite needles are Knitter's Pride Dreamz needles. They are made from polished wood, so they're light-weight and comfortable. They don't get too cold or too warm, and they come  in beautiful stained colors which make me happy (except the first time I used them, because the size 7's are black and boring). The wood grabs the yarn just enough that my stitches stay secure, but not so much that it's hard to slide the work along the needle. For my birthday, I bought myself this set of interchangeable-point cable needles - I've had children slide an aluminum needle right out of my work before, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth, and I could imagine the same happening with a straight wooden needle. With cable needles, you can center your work on the cable and wind the points up and tuck them away - no danger!

Also, now that I learned to use the magic loop method, I don't even need double-point needles to knit tubes. However, using dpns is fun and satisfying, so I still have some of those in my box to play with. Maybe one of these days I'll try my hand at creating a video tutorial. Magic Loop will be my first offering, because it changed my knitting so much.

After needles, the most useful tool I've got is my row counter. On my first pair of socks, I depended on counting the rows to make sure they were the same size, but I must be really bad at counting rows, because they came out different sizes. Not too much, and they're socks anyway, so they're supposed to stretch to fit, but still. They were a gift, and they were crooked and dumb (thanks for that assessment, Bob), so to prevent further errors, I bought a lockable click-counter. It's also very helpful for knitting lace, or anything where you have to follow a chart. In that vein, highlighters are also helpful, as you can color the rows different colors, so you don't get confused.

I have a billion stitch markers, but I'm always losing them (read: my kids steal them). When I want them, I like the locking kind that look like mini safety pins better than the ring kind, but waste yarn works just fine, and besides which, I'm usually aware of when I'm coming to the marked spot anyway. Maybe I just haven't yet taken on the right challenge, and those stitch markers will have their day.

Next up, I need a yarn swift! How about you? What knitting tools do you use? What would you like to have?

Intro Post - Longer than Usual, I Promise.

Hi, welcome to my blog! I’m Kathleen, and I like real things. I like my toys made out of wood and fabric, my food made out of butter, wine, organic produce and fresh herbs, and my clothing custom made from natural fibers. Because of this, I tend to just make things myself. I find great satisfaction and peace in making things with my own two hands, using only the finest real components. However, I’m also a realist, and to be honest, there’s a lot of plastic in my life, both literal and figurative. I’m not totally hardcore – I make my own deodorant and toothpaste, but I use shampoo and shaving cream. And that’s OK.

Now that you know a bit about me, I’d like to introduce you to my friend Bob. Bob sits on my couch and sleeps in my bed and rides in the passenger seat of my car. He is very clever, and he gives me a lot of advice, since he knows so many things. For example, he knows that if I spent less money on fabric and crafting supplies that I’m probably not going to get around to using, maybe we could afford a bigger house. However, a bigger house would be a bad idea because I’m such a lousy housekeeper. And since I’m such a lousy housekeeper, I shouldn’t be wasting my time on sewing, quilting, knitting and all those other things, I should be doing a better job of what’s important, like exercising and eating right so I can be a valuable attractive person whose body shows no signs of age or the bearing of seven children. But he also knows that that will never happen, because I am a fat and worthless slob who isn’t very good at making things anyway, and I may as well give in, and eat chocolate in my messy house and play video games instead of doing anything “productive” (productive of what, anyway? Silly homemade stuff that no one wants?).

See, Bob is my depression. His voice is very different from my voice, but sometimes he talks so loud I get confused. So I gave him a name to help me distinguish him from me. Now I’m working on ending our relationship. I knew it had gone too far when I didn’t want to make things any more. Every time I thought of making something, I was filled with… nothing. Apathy. Sluggishness. Anything but inspiration (and I’m a total slave to my muse – more on that later). So, to be quite blunt, I shoved myself into therapy and started taking drugs. And now, I’m going to help myself save myself by turning back to my beautiful things.

I named this blog after the ancient Silk Road trading route, a long, arduous and dangerous journey that people took to obtain and trade beautiful things. (Well, and money too, but I’m not focusing on that.) I like the idea that beautiful things are worth pursuing. I also believe in the saving power of work. Making things for my family is better than buying things for my family because making things is a labor of love. (OK, Shopping is labor too, but I grumble the whole time, so there goes the redemptive power.) So, here is a place for me to share my work, delight in beauty, talk about depression, and maybe inspire and get inspired along the way.

This is probably the most personal I’ll ever get. I hope you enjoy my work.